SEO Skills for Claude Code: A Strategy Framework and 197 Hacks, Free

Most people hand Claude Code a prompt and hope for the best. "Write me an SEO article" gets generic output: no strategy behind it, no tactics inside it. A skill fixes that. It gives the model a structured knowledge system, so it works at a senior SEO level instead of guessing.

I built two SEO skills for Claude Code. One is the thinking layer, a strategy framework for audits, keyword research, and content planning. The other is the doing layer, 197 tactical hacks you can run today. Both are free to download, no email required.

This post covers what is inside each skill, why a skill beats a prompt, how I built them, and how to install them in about 30 seconds.

What's inside

These are two complementary packages. One handles strategy, how to think about SEO. The other handles tactics, what to do. Together they cover the full spectrum: site audits, keyword research, content planning, and 197 specific, executable hacks.

SEO Strategy Skill: the thinking layer

A principal-level framework that makes Claude Code think like a senior SEO strategist. It produces site audits, content briefs, keyword research, and technical audits with prioritised recommendations.

SEO Hacks Skill: the doing layer

197 tactical, executable hacks organised across strategic layers. Each hack includes what it does, step-by-step execution, and why it works. Every one has a direct execution path. No theory without action.

Why skills, not prompts

Most people give AI a prompt like "write me an SEO article" and get generic output. A prompt is a one-off instruction. A skill is a structured, reusable knowledge system that gives the AI genuine competence in a discipline.

The difference matters. A prompt tells the AI what to do once. A skill teaches it how to think about an entire domain: the frameworks, the priorities, the edge cases, the tactics that work. With these skills installed, Claude Code does not guess at SEO. It applies 197 proven hacks and a full strategy framework automatically, adapting them to your project.

• A prompt: "Write an SEO-optimised blog post about X." You get generic output with no strategic context and no tactical depth.
• A skill: Claude Code analyses your site against 197 hacks, finds the gaps, generates a prioritised action plan, and executes it, all grounded in real frameworks and proven tactics.

How I built them

The two skills were built separately, each from different sources and through a different process. The strategy skill came first, then the hacks skill.

The strategy skill

I started with CXL, in my experience one of the strongest marketing education platforms available. I processed course transcripts and PDFs to extract the strategic frameworks: how to think about site audits, content strategy, keyword research, technical SEO, and link building architecture. That became the backbone.

Next I scraped and combined the best SEO checklists from the major players: Rank Math, Yoast, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz. Each tool has its own view of best practice. Merging all five gives a more complete picture than any single source, covering everything from canonical tags to Core Web Vitals.

Finally I layered in my own experience from over a decade of growth marketing. I filled gaps, corrected outdated advice, and added context that only comes from hands-on practice. The result is a principal-level strategy framework across the full strategic layer.

The hacks skill

I built a mini-tool with Claude Code to scrape content from @edward.builds, who publishes extensively about SEO and marketing tactics. Out of 1,509 posts, I extracted 1,582 individual hacks, since some videos held several. Then the filtering began.

The raw extraction was large but noisy. I ran it through multiple rounds of quality scoring, deduplication, and relevance filtering. The goal was to keep only hacks that are specific, actionable, and still relevant in 2026. From 740 SEO-tagged hacks, only 197 survived: a 27% survival rate.

Then I layered in my own experience again, to fill gaps, update stale advice, and add practitioner context. The result is 197 executable hacks across eight categories, each with a direct execution path.

The elimination funnel

Here is the full filtering pipeline for the hacks skill. The goal was aggressive curation: keep only what is specific, actionable, and still works today.

Sources and credits

These skills combine several sources. Credit where it is due, and all content is current as of March 2026.

The hacks skill is built primarily from @edward.builds. His videos cover SEO tactics with a specificity that is rare in the space, and all 197 hacks trace back to his content, processed through the pipeline above. The strategy skill draws heavily on CXL course materials, some of the most rigorous marketing education available, and on best-practice checklists combined from Rank Math, Yoast, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz.

Get the skills

Download either skill and drop it into your project. Both are plain markdown, nothing hidden.

Quick start

Getting these working in Claude Code takes about 30 seconds:

1. Download the zip files, or copy the individual .md files you want.
2. Unzip into your project's .claude/skills/ directory, or any location you prefer.
3. Reference the skill in your CLAUDE.md file so Claude Code knows it exists.
4. Invoke the skill: /seo for strategy and audits, or /seo-hacks for tactical hacks.

# Skills
- SEO Strategy: .claude/skills/seo-strategy-skill/
- SEO Hacks: .claude/skills/seo-hacks-skill/

Once installed, Claude Code applies these skills to your project automatically. The strategy skill handles audits, keyword research, and content planning. The hacks skill supplies specific, executable tactics you can deploy immediately.